The Steaming Sixties: #02 'Steam in the Suburbs' -Stirring Episodes from the Last Decade of Steam on BR- (IR054)

Product No.: IR054
Title: The Steaming Sixties: #02 'Steam in the Suburbs' -Stirring Episodes from the Last Decade of Steam on BR-
Author(s): Wilkinson, Ronald
Illustrator(s): N/A
Publisher: Irwell Press
ISBN: 9781906919054
Condition: New
Binding: Laminated Pictorial Boards
Dust Jacket: None
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Year: 2009

Features: 64 Pages with Colour Photos.

The year 1963 was a momentous one for steam on BR. Finally, the tide of diesels could no longer be ignored and even the biggest and best of passenger steam power was now only too obviously under threat. This series almost by definition chronicles the decline of steam and on 'the GN' (that bit of railway out of Kings Cross to Peterborough, for our purposes) that decline was horribly abrupt.

A handful of main line diesels turned into a torrent and between the Beatles first No.1, From Me To You in April 1963 and their second, She Loves You in the summer, Kings Cross shed had closed and steam on 'the GN' had been pronounced dead. It took BR some frantic months of repeated stakes through the heart before steam finally ceased to rise from its coffin but it was, to most intents and purposes, over. The last scheduled steam working out of Kings Cross took place on Sunday 16 June; Kings Cross 'Top Shed' closed from 17 June 1963 and that was it. This is what some of it looked like.